though sentimentalists lament the hardship of the case, | it is justly and necessarily so. She is cut off from the hope of useful and profitable employment, and driven by necessity to further vice. Her misery, and the hopelessness of retrieving, render her desperate, until she sinks into every depth of depravity, and is prepared for every crime that can contaminate and infest society. She has given birth to a human being, who, if it be so unfortunate as to survive its miserable infancy, is commonly educated to a like course of vice, depravity and crime. purity of manners, among the free females of the slave holding states. Such an imputation, however, and made in coarse terms, we have never heard here—here where divorce was never known-where no court was ever polluted by an action for criminal conversation with a wife-where it is related rather as matter of tradition, not unmingled with wonder, that a Carolinian woman of education and family, proved false to her conjugal faith-an imputation deserving only of such reply as self-respect would forbid us to give, if respect for the author of it did not. And can it be doubted, that this purity is caused by, and is a compensation for the evils resulting from the existence of an enslaved class of more relaxed morals? It is mostly the warm passions of youth, which give say, that the intercourse which takes place with enslaved females, is less depraving in its effects, than when it is carried on with females of their own caste. In the first place, as like attracts like, that which is unlike repels; and though the strength of passion be sufficient to overcome the repulsion, still the attraction is less. He feels that he is connecting himself with one of an inferior and servile caste, and that there is something of degradation in the act. The intercourse is generally casual; he does not make her habitually an associate, and is less likely to receive any taint from her habits and manners. He is less liable to those extraordinary fascinations, with which worthless women sometimes entangle their victims, to the utter destruction of all principle, worth and vigor of character. The female of his own race offers greater allurements. The haunts of vice often present a shew of elegance, and various luxury tempts the senses. They are made an habitual resort, and their inmates associate, till the general character receives a taint from the corrupted atmosphere. Not only the practice is licentious, but the understanding is sophisticated; the moral feelings are bewildered, and the boundaries of virtue and vice confused. Where such licentiousness very extensively prevails, society is rotten to the heart. Compare with this the female slave under similar circumstances. She is not a less useful member of society than before. If shame be attached to her conduct, it is such shame as would be clsewhere felt for a venial impropriety. She has not impaired her means of sup-rise to licentious intercourse. But I do not hesitate to port, nor materially impaired her character, or lowered her station in society; she has done no great injury to herself, or any other human being. Her offspring is not a burden, but an acquisition to her owner; his support is provided for, and he is brought up to usefulness; if the fruit of intercourse with a freeman, his condition is, perhaps, raised somewhat above that of his mother. Under these circumstances, with imperfect knowledge, tempted by the strongest of human passions-unrestrained by the motives which operate to restrain, but are so often found insufficient to restrain the conduct of females elsewhere, can it be matter of surprise that she should so often yield to the temptation? Is not the evil less in itself, and in reference to society-much less in the sight of God and man? As was said of theftthe want of chastity, which among females of other countries, is sometimes vice, sometimes crime-among the free of our own, much more aggravated; among slaves, hardly deserves a harsher term than that of weakness. I have heard of complaint made by a free prostitute, of the greater countenance and indulgence shown by society towards colored persons of her profession, (aways regarded as of an inferior and servile class, though individually free,) than to those of her own complexion. The former readily obtain employment; arc even admitted into families, and treated with some degree of kindness and familiarity, while any approach to intercourse with the latter is shunned as contamination. The distinction is habitually made, and it is founded on the unerring instinct cf nature. The colored prostitute is, in fact, a far less contaminated and depraved being. Still many, in spite of temptation, do preserve a perfectly virtuous conduct, and I imagine it hardly ever entered into the mind of one of these, that she was likely to be forced from it by authority or violence. But is it a small compensation for the evils attending the relation of the sexes among the enslaved class, that they have universally the opportunity of indulging the first instinct of nature, by forming matrimonial connexions? What painful restraint-what constant effort to struggle against the strongest impulses, are habitually practised elsewhere, and by other classes? And they must be practised, unless greater evils would be encountered. On the one side, all the evils of vice, with the miseries to which it leads-on the other, a marriage cursed and made hateful by want, the sufferIt may be asked, if we have no prostitutes from the ings of children, and agonizing apprehensions confree class of society among ourselves. I answer in no cerning their future fate. Is it a small good, that the assignable proportion. With general truth, it might slave is free from all this? He knows that his own be said, that there are none. When such a case occurs, subsistence is secure, and that his children will be in as it is among the rare evils of society. And apart from good a condition as himself. To a refined and intellccother and better reasons, which we believe to exist, it tual nature, it may not be difficult to practise the reis plain that it must be so, from the comparative absence straint of which I have spoken. But the reasoning of temptation. Our brothels, comparatively very few from such to the great mass of mankind, is most fallaand these should not be permitted to exist at all-are cious. To these, the supply of their natural and physifilled, for the most part, by importation from the cities cal wants, and the indulgence of the natural domestic of our confederate states, where slavery does not exist. affections, must, for the most part, afford the greatest In return for the benefits which they receive from our good of which they are capable. To the evils which slavery, along with tariffs, libels, opinions, moral, reli- sometimes attend their matrimonial connexions, arising gious, or political-they furnish us also with a supply from their looser morality, slaves, for obvious reasons, of thieves and prostitutes. Never, but in a single in- are comparatively insensible. I am no apologist of stance, have I heard of an imputation on the generall vice, nor would I extenuate the conduct of the profli gate and unfeeling, who would violate the sanctity of replied-it is because they labor under a sterner comeven these engagements, and occasion the pain which pulsion. The laws interpose no obstacle to their rais such violations no doubt do often inflict. Yet such is the truth and we cannot make it otherwise. We know, that a woman's having been before a mother, is very seldom indeed an objection to her being made a wife. I know perfectly well how this will be regarded by a class of reasoners or declaimers, as imposing a character of deeper horror on the whole system; but still, I will say, that if they are to be exposed to the evil, it is mercy that the sensibility to it should be blunted. Is it no compensation also for the vices incident to slavery, that they are, to a great degree, secured against the temptation to greater crimes and more atrocious vices, and the miseries which attend them; against their own disposition to indolence, and the profligacy which is its common result? But if they are subject to the vices, they have also the virtues of slaves. Fidelity-often proof against all temptation, even death itself; an eminently cheerful and social temper; what the Bible imposes as a duty, but which might seem an equivocal virtue in the code of modern morality-submission to constituted authority, and a disposition to be attached to, as well as to respect those whom they are taught to regard as superiors. They may have all the knowledge which will make them useful in the station in which God has been pleased to place them, and may cultivate the virtues which will render them acceptable to him. But what has the slave of any country to do with heroic virtues, liberal knowledge, or elegant accomplishments? It is for the master; arising out of his situation-imposed on him as duty-dangerous and disgraceful if neglected-to compensate for this, by his own more asiduous cultivation of the more generous virtues, and liberal attainments. It has been supposed one of the great evils of slavery, that it affords the slave no opportunity of raising himself to a higher rank in society, and that he has, therefore, no inducement to meritorious exertion, or the cultivation of his faculties. The indolence and carelessness of the slave, and the less productive quality of his labor, are traced to the want of such excitement. The first compensation for this disadvantage, is his security. If he can rise no higher, he is just in the same degree secured against the chances of falling lower. It has been sometimes made a question whether it were better for man to be freed from the perturbations of hope and fear, or to be exposed to their vicissitudes. But I suppose there could be little question with respect to a situation, in which the fears must greatly predominate over the hopes. And such, I apprehend, to be the condition of the laboring poor in countries where slavery does not exist. If not exposed to present suffering, there is continual apprehension for the future-for themselves-for their children-of sickness and want, if not of actual starvation. They expect to improve their circumstances! Would any person of ordinary candor, say that there is one in a hundred of them, who does not well know, that with all the exertion he can make, it is out of his power materially to improve his circumstances? I speak not so much of menial servants, who are generally of a superior class, as of the agricultural and manufacturing laborers. They labor with no such view. It is the instinctive struggle to preserve existence-and when the superior efficiency of their labor over that of our slaves is pointed out, as being animated by a freeman's hopes, might it not well be ing their condition in society. 'Tis a great boon; but as to the great mass, they know that they never will be able to raise it-and it should seem not very important in effect, whether it be the interdict of law, or imposed by the circumstances of the society. One in a thousand is successful. But does his success compensate for the sufferings of the many who are tantalized, baffled, and tortured in vain attempts to attain a like result? If the individual be conscious of intellectual power, the suffering is greater. Even where success is apparently attained, he sometimes gains it but to die; or with all capacity to enjoy it, exhausted-worn out in the struggle with fortune. If it be true that the African is an inferior variety of the human race, of less elevated character, and more limited intellect, is it not desirable that the inferior laboring class should be made up of such, who will conform to their condition without painful aspirations, and vain struggles? The slave is certainly liable to be sold. But, perhaps, it may be questioned, whether this is a greater evil than the liability of the laborer, in fully peopled countries, to be dismissed by his employer, with the uncertainty of being able to obtain employment, or the means of subsistence elsewhere. With us, the employer cannot dismiss his laborer without providing him with another employer. His means of subsistence are secure, and this is a compensation for much. He is also liable to be separated from wife or child-though not more frequently, that I am aware of, than the exigency of their condition compels the separation of families among the laboring poor elsewhere; but from native character and temperament, the separation is much less severely felt. And it is one of the compensations, that he may sustain these relations without suffering a still severer penalty for the indulgence. The love of liberty is a noble passion-to have the free, uncontrolled disposition of ourselves, our words and actions. But alas! it is one in which we know that a large portion of the human race can never be gratified. It is mockery, to say that the laborer any where has such disposition of himself; though there may be an approach to it in some peculiar, and those, perhaps, not the most desirable, states of society. But unless he be properly disciplined and prepared for its enjoyment, it is the most fatal boon that could be conferred-fatal to himself and others. If slaves have less freedom of action than other laborers, which I by no means admit, they are saved in a great degree from the responsibility of self-government, and the evils springing from their own perverse wills. Those who have looked most closely into life, and know how great a portion of human misery is derived from these sourcesthe undecided and wavering purpose, producing ineffectual exertion, or indolence with its thousand attendant evils-the wayward conduct-intemperance or profligacy-will most appreciate this benefit. The line of a slave's duty is marked out with precision, and he has no choice but to follow it. He is saved the double difficulty, first of determining the proper course for himself, and then of summoning up the energy which will sustain him in pursuing it. If some superior power should impose on the laborious poor of any other country this, as their unalterable condition-you shall be saved from the torturing anxiety concerning your own future support, and that of your children, which now pursues you through life, and haunts you in death-you shall be under the necessity of regular and healthful, though not excessive labor-in return, you shall have the ample supply of your natural wants-you may follow the instinct of nature in becoming parents, without apprehending that this supply will fail yourselves or your children-you shall be supported and relieved in sickness, and in old age wear out the remains of existence among familiar scenes and accustomed associates, without being driven to beg, or to resort to the hard and miserable charity of a work house-you shall of necessity be temperate, and shall have neither the temptation nor opportunity to commit great crimes, or practice the more destructive vices-how inappreciable would the boon be thought! And is not this a very near approach to the condition of our slaves? The evils of their situation they but lightly feel, and would hardly feel at all, if they were not sedulously instructed into sensibility. Certain it is, that if their fate were at the absolute disposal of a council of the most enlightened philanthropists in christendom, with unlimited resources, they could place them in no situation so favorable to themselves, as that which they at present occupy. But whatever good there may be, or whatever mitigation of evil, it is worse than valueless, because it is the result of slavery. I am aware, that however often answered, it is likely to be repeated again and again-how can that institution be tolerable, by which a large class of society is cut off from the hope of improvement in knowledge; to whom blows are not degrading; theft no more than a fault; falsehood and the want of chastity almost venial, and in which a husband or parent looks with comparative indifference, on that which, to a freeman, would be the dishonor of a wife or child? But why not, if it produces the greatest aggregate of good? Sin and ignorance are only evils because they lead to misery. It is not our institution, but the institution of nature, that in the progress of society a portion of it should be exposed to want, and the misery which it brings, and therofore involved in ignorance, více, and depravity. In anticipating some of the good, we also anticipate a portion of the evil of civilization. But we have it in a mitigated form. The want and the misery are unknown; the ignorance is less a misfortune, because the being is not the guardian of himself, and partly on account of that involuntary ignorance, the vice is less vice-less hurtful to man, and less displeasing to God. There is something in this word slavery which seems to partake of the qualities of the insane root, and distempers the minds of men. That which would be true in relation to one predicament, they misapply to another, to which it has no application at all. Some of the virtues of a freeman would be the vices of slaves. To submit to a blow, would be degrading to a freeman, because he is the protector of himself. It is not degrading to a slave-neither is it to a priest or a woman. And is it a misfortune that it should be so? The freeman of other countries is compelled to submit to indignities hardly more endurable than blows-indignities to make the sensitive feelings shrink, and the proud heart swell; and this very name of freeman gives them double rancor. If when a man is born in Europe, it were certainly foreseen that he was destined to a life of painful labor-to obscurity, contempt and privationwould it not be mercy that he should be reared in ignorance and apathy, and trained to the endurance of the evils he must encounter? It is not certainly foreseen as to any individual, but it is forcseen as to the great mass of those born of the laboring poor; and it is for the mass, not for the exception, that the institutions of society are to provide. Is it not better that the character and intellect of the individual should be suited to the station which he is to occupy? Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox, by giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform them? If there were infallible marks by which individuals of inferior intellect, and inferior character, could be selected at their birthwould not the interests of society be served, and would not some sort of fitness seem to require, that they should be selected for the inferior and servile offices? And if this race be generally marked by such inferiority, is it not fit that they should fill them? I am well aware that those whose aspirations are after a state of society from which evil shall be banished, and who look in life for that which life will never afford, contemplate that all the offices of life may be performed without contempt or degradation-all be regarded as equally liberal, or equally respected. But theorists cannot control Nature and bend her to their views, and the inequality of which I have before spoken, is deeply founded in Nature. The offices which employ knowledge and intellect, will always be regarded as more liberal than those which only require the labor of the hands. When there is competition for employment, he who gives it bestows a favor, and it will be so received. He will assume superiority from the power of dismissing his laborers, and from fear of this, the latter will practice deference, often amounting to servility. Such in time will become the established relation between the employer and the employed, the rich and the poor. If want be accompanied with sordidness and squalor, though it be pitied, the pity will be mixed with some degree of contempt. If it lead to misery, and misery to vice, there will be disgust and aversion. What is the essential character of slavery, and in what does it differ from the servitude of other countries? If I should venture on a definition, I should say that where a man is compelled to labor at the will of another, and to give him much the greater portion of the product of his labor, there slavery exists; and it is immaterial by what sort of compulsion the will of the laborer is subdued. It is what no human being would do without some sort of compulsion. He cannot be compelled to labor by blows. No-but what difference does it make, if you can inflict any other sort of torture which will be equally effectual in subduing the will? if you can starve him, or alarm him for the subsistence of himself or his family? And is it not under this compulsion that the freeman labors? I do not mean in every particular case, but in the general. Will any one be hardy enough to say that he is at his own disposal, or has the governinent of himself? True, he may change his employer if he is dissatisfied with his conduct towards him; but this is a privilege he would in the majority of cases gladly abandon, and render the connexion between them indissoluble. There is far less of the interest and attachment in his relation to his employer, which so often exists between the master and the slave, and mitigates the condition of the latter. An intelligent English traveller has characterized as the most miserable and degraded of all it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it never prattles.” Imagine such a description applied to the children of negro slaves, the most vacant of human beings, whose life is a holiday. And this people, to whom these horrors are familiar, are those who fill the world with clamor, concerning the injustice and cruelty of slavery. I speak in no invidious spirit. Neither the laws nor the government of England are to be reproached with the evils which are inseparable from the state of their society—as little, undoubtedly, are we to be reproached with the existence of our slavery. Including the whole of the United States-and for reasons already given, the whole ought to be included, as receiving in no unequal degree the benefit-may we not say justly that we have less slavery, and more mitigated slavery, than any other country in the civilized world? "What is that defective being, with calfless legs and stooping shoulders, weak in body and mind, inert, pusillanimous and stupid, whose premature wrinkles and furtive glance, tell of misery and degradation? That is an English peasant or pauper, for the words are synonimous. His sire was a pauper, and his mother's milk wanted nourishment. From infancy his food has been bad, as well as insufficient; and he now feels the pains of unsatisfied hunger nearly whenever he is awake. But half clothed, and never supplied with more warmth than suffices to cook his scanty meals, cold and wet come to him, and stay by him with the weather. He is married, of course; for to this he would have been driven by the poor laws, even if he had been, as he never was, sufficiently comfortable and prudent to dread the burden of a family. But though instinct, and the overseer have given him a wife, he has not tasted the highest joys of husband and father. His partner and his little ones being like himself, often hungry, seldom warm, sometimes sick without aid, and always sorrowful without hope, are greedy, selfish, and vexing; so, to use his own expression, he hates the sight of them, and resorts to his hovel, only because a hedge affords less shelter from the wind and rain. Compelled by parish law to support his family, which means to join them in consuming an allowance from the parish, he frequently conspires with his wife to get that allowance increased, or prevent its being diminished. This brings beggary, trickery, and quarrelling, and ends in settled craft. Though he have the inclination, he wants the courage to become, like more energetic men of his class, a poacher or smuggler on a large scale, but he pilfers occasionally, and teaches his children to lie and steal. His subdued and slavish manner towards his great neighbors, shews that they treat him with suspicion and harshness. Consequently he at once dreads and hates them; but he will never harm them by vioThat the African negro is an inferior variety of the lent means. Too degraded to be desperate, he is only human race, is, I think, now generally admitted, and thoroughly depraved. His miserable career will be his distinguishing characteristics are such as pecushort; rheumatism and asthma are conducting him to liarly mark him out for the situation which he occupies the work-house, where he will breathe his last without among us. And these are no less marked in their orione pleasant recollection, and so make room for another ginal country, than as we have daily occasion to observe wretch, who may live and die in the same way." And them. The most remarkable is their indifference to this description, or some other, not much less revolt-personal liberty. In this they have followed their ining, is applied to "the bulk of the people, the great stincts since we have any knowledge of their continent, body of the people." Take the following description by enslaving each other; but contrary to the experiof the condition of childhood, which has justly been called eloquent.* That they are called free, undoubtedly aggravates the sufferings of the slaves of other regions. They see the enormous inequality which exists, and feel their own misery, and can hardly conceive otherwise, than that there is some injustice in the institutions of society to occasion these. They regard the apparently more fortunate class as oppressors, and it adds bitterness, that they should be of the same name and race. They feel indignity more acutely, and more of discontent and evil passion is excited; they feel that it is mockery that calls them free. Men do not so much hate and envy those who are separated from them by a wide distance, and some apparently impassable barrier, as those who approach nearer to their own condition, and with whom they habitually bring themselves into comparison. The slave with us is not tantalized with the name of freedom, to which his whole condition gives the lie, and would do so if he were emancipated tomorrow. The African slave sces that nature herself has marked him as a separate-and if left to himself, I have no doubt he would feel it to be an inferior-race, and interposed a barrier almost insuperable to his becoming a member of the same society, standing on the same footing of right and privilege with his master. ence of every other race, the possession of slaves has had no inaterial effect in raising the character, and pro"The children of the very poor have no young times; moting the civilization of the master. Another trait is it makes the very heart bleed, to overhear the casual the want of domestic affections, and insensibility to street talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a the tics of kindred. In the travels of the Landers, after woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather speaking of a single exception, in the person of a woabove the squalid beings we have been contemplating man who betrayed some transient emotion in passing It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays, by the country from which she had been torn as a slave, (fitting that age,) of the promised sight or play; of the authors add: "that Africans, generally speaking, praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and betray the most perfect indifference on losing their clear starching; of the price of coals, or of potatoes. liberty, and being deprived of their relatives, while The questions of the child, that should be the very out-love of country is equally a stranger to their breasts, as pourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with fore-social tenderness or domestic affection." "Marriage cast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a is celebrated by the nations as unconcernedly as possiwoman, before it was a child. It has learnt to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; Essays of Elia. ble; a man thinks as little of taking a wife, as of cutting an car of corn-affection is altogether out of the question." They are, however, very submissive to autho those public qualities that claim respect or command admiration. The love of country is not strong enough in their bosoms to incite them to defend it against a deformed rity, and seem to entertain great reverence for chiefs, | senses. If the inferiority exists, it is attributed to the priests, and masters. No greater indignity can be of- apathy and degradation produced by slavery. Though fered an individual, than to throw opprobrium on his of the hundreds of thousands scattered over other counparents. On this point of their character, I think I tries, where the laws impose no liability upon them, have remarked, that, contrary to the instinct of nature none has given evidence of an approach to even mediin other races, they entertain less regard for children ocrity of intellectual excellence; this too is attributed than for parents, to whose authority they have been ac- to the slavery of a portion of their race. They are customed to submit. Their character is thus summed regarded as a servile caste, and degraded by opinion, up by the travellers quoted: "The few opportunities and thus every generous effort is repressed. Yet though we have had of studying their characters, induce us to this should be the general effect, this very estimation is believe that they are a simple, honest, inoffensive, but calculated to produce the contrary effect in particular weak, timid, and cowardly race. They seem to have instances. It is observed by Bacon, with respect to no social tenderness, very few of those amiable private virtues which could win our affections, and none of persons and eunuchs, that though in general there is something of perversity in their character, the disadvantage often leads to extraordinary displays of virtue and excellence. "Whosoever hath any thing despicable foe; and of the active energy, noble senti- fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also ments, and contempt of danger which distinguishes the a perpetual spur in himself, to rescue and deliver himNorth American tribes and other savages, no traces are self from scorn." So it would be with them, if they to be found among this slothful people. Regardless of were capable of European aspirations-genius, if they the past, as reckless of the future, the present alone in-possessed it, would be doubly fired with noble rage to fluences their actions. In this respect, they approach nearer to the nature of the brute creation, than perhaps any other people on the face of the globe." Let me ask if this people do not furnish the very material out of which slaves ought to be made, and whether it be not an improving of their condition to make them the slaves of civilized masters? There is a variety in the character of the tribes. Some are brutally and sa-mechanical offices of society. vagely ferocious and bloody, whom it would be mercy And why should it not be so? We have among doto enslave. From the travellers' account, it seems not mestic animals, infinite varieties, distinguished by variunlikely that the negro race is tending to extermina-ous degrees of sagacity, courage, strength, swiftness, tion, being daily encroached on, and overrun by the superior Arab race. It may be, that when they shall have been lost from their native seats, they may be found numerous, and in no unhappy condition, on the continent to which they have been transplanted. rescue itself from this scorn. Of course, I do not mean to say that there may not be found among them some of superior capacity to many white persons; but that great intellectual powers are, perhaps, never found among them, and that in general their capacity is very limited, and their feelings animal and coarse-fitting them peculiarly to discharge the lower, and merely and other qualities. And it may be observed, that this is no objection to their being derived from a common origin, which we suppose them to have had. Yet these accidental qualities, as they may be termed, however acquired in the first instance, we know that they transThe opinion which connects form and features with mit unimpaired to their posterity for an indefinite succharacter and intellectual power, is one so deeply im- cession of generations. It is most important that these pressed on the human mind, that perhaps there is varieties should be preserved, and that each should be scarcely any man who does not almost daily act upon applied to the purposes for which it is best adapted. it, and in some measure verify its truth. Yet in spite No phrilo-zoost, I believe, has suggested it as desirable of this intimation of nature, and though the anatomist that these varieties should be melted down into one and physiologist may tell them that the races differ in equal, undistinguished race of curs or road horses. every bone and muscle, and in the proportion of brain Slavery, as it is said in an eloquent article published and nerves, yet there are some, who with a most bigot-in a southern periodical work, to which I am indebted ted and fanatical determination to free themselves from for other ideas, "has done more to elevate a degraded what they have prejudged to be prejudice, will still maintain that this physiognomy, evidently tending to that of the brute when compared to that of the Caucasian race, may be enlightened by as much thought, and animated by as lofty sentiment. We who have the best opportunity of judging, are pronounced to be incompetent to do so, and to be blinded by our interest and prejudices—often by those who have had no means of judging-and we are to be taught to distrust or disbelieve that which we daily observe, and familiarly know, on such authority. Our prejudices are spoken of. But the truth is, that, until very lately, since circumstances have compelled us to think for ourselves, we took our opinions on this subject, as on every other, ready formed from the country of our origin. And so deeply rooted were they, that we adhered to them, as most men will do to deeply rooted opinions, even against the evidence of our own observation, and our own race in the scale of humanity; to tame the savage; to civilize the barbarous; to soften the ferocious; to enlighten the ignorant, and to spread the blessings of christianity among the heathen, than all the missionaries that philanthropy and religion have ever sent forth." Yet unquestionable as this is, and though human ingenuity and thought may be tasked in vain to devise any other means by which these blessings could have been conferred, yet a sort of sensibility which would be only mawkish and contemptible, if it were not mischievous, affects still to weep over the wrongs of "injured Africa." Can there be a doubt of the immense benefit which has been conferred on the race, by transplanting them from their native, dark, and barbarous regions, to the American continent and islands? There, threefourths of the race are in a state of the most deplorable Southern Literary Messenger, for January, 1835. Note to Blackstone's Commentarics. VOL. IV.-79 |